CHURCHES

One of the main stalwarts of Barnsley’s culture for hundreds of years has been religion.

Barnsley is a hub of all religions, but during the pandemic it became harder for residents to worship in their chosen place.

But this didn’t stop people thinking of ways to keep doing what they loved.

When the pandemic first struck it was evident that churches would need to think of modern ways to reach their congregation - and they did exactly that. They went online, streaming services for all to see - but Pat Padgett, a member of St Helen’s Church in Athersley, admitted that they were always going to be fighting an up hill battle.

She said: “It was very, very difficult because the church had to close.

“We tried through Facebook to broadcast the services.

“But if you think that the majority of church-goers are elderly, they don’t particularly have the technology to follow them online.

“That made it very difficult for people to follow.” But as soon as churches were able to re-open their doors to the public, things changed very quickly.

“As soon as we could open, we at Athersley did,” she added.

“We opened with masks whereas I know a lot of other churches in the area didn’t open - they were quite a long time after us.

“But because of the congregation we have, most of them are elderly.

“They were very wary of coming out.

“Keeping the church going, because our income comes from those who use the church and use its facilities and rooms, that wasn’t happening.

“Financially we found that very difficult and we’re still recovering from that.

“I would say we have that 95 per cent of the congregation back but there’s still people, as in everything, people get out of the habit of doing things.

“We have had one or two who haven’t coming back.” As time goes on, Pat is hoping that things do get back to normal.

“Going forward, we have started having social meetings and people are coming.

“Life is getting back to normal but it has taken a couple of years for it to do so.

“We had a lot of baptisms when we reopened as a lot of babies were born during the pandemic.”